Five for Friday

Friday, September 25, 2015

This week was apple week in first grade! I don't get very many opportunities in the year where I can teach themes that overlap over multiple subjects, so I love apple week! We learned all about Johnny Appleseed during social studies, and then did apple investigations during math and science all week. We had a blast! We made apple glyphs today during math, so of course, we had to taste test apple cider and homemade apple sauce! Incredibly enough, I made homemade apple sauce (in my breadmaker of all things)... but at home. Peeling and slicing the apples is so time consuming and I didn't think I could handle it in the classroom. It was a hit, though!

More highlights from apple week included comparing weight with apples, sink or float, and apple graphing! I love Reagan Tunstall's apple interactive activities! The students were so excited to finish and take home their finished apple books today! Apple week was definitely a success.

So I signed up for Kaleidoscope at some point last year, because it was free and my mom said she knew some teachers who had received some helpful free stuff. I completely forgot about it until I received a large box last week. It was full of 740 band-aids from Nexcare, as well as 400 parent flyers with coupons for $0.50 off children's Fruit of the Loom underwear. I had no intention of sending home underwear coupons with my students, but I figured the band-aids would be useful. Of course, they were individually wrapped in plastic, but it is what it is. So we got to work with some contraction surgery! I didn't even feel bad about wasting band-aids.

I also whipped up a simple contraction foldable. It's nothing fancy, but it's fun and it got the job done. You can grab it here, if you are interested. Yes, those are seat belts on the letters that are safe. The other letters were bad drivers and they were texting while driving (gasp!) so they were injured.

I finally decided to bite the bullet and buy sturdy tubs for my classroom library. My books were all labeled and they were sorted, but there were multiple topics per section, it was hard for students to sift through and find the books they wanted, and it was messy! So I took a trip to Big Lots last weekend and bought all the tubs I needed. All I had to do was print the large labels for the front of each basket, so it wasn't too big of a task. I love the new look and my kids seem to love it too. #teacherwin